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Liverpool have complained to Professional Games Match Officials (PGMO) over the decision to disallow Virgil van Dijk’s header at Manchester City on Sunday amid concern that the relevant criteria were not met.
Van Dijk’s effort was ruled out in the 38th minute, when City were leading 1-0, and the referee Chris Kavanagh’s on-field decision was backed by the video assistant referee, Michael Oliver. The VAR agreed that the Liverpool defender Andy Robertson was “in an offside position and deemed to be making an obvious action directly in front of the goalkeeper” when ducking out the way of Van Dijk’s header as it sailed past Gianluigi Donnarumma.
Liverpool dispute that interpretation and do not believe the City goalkeeper’s line of vision was affected by Robertson. The club are bewildered that VAR did not allow the goal to stand and have contacted Howard Webb, the head of the refereeing body, to challenge the decision.
Liverpool do not believe the wording of Law 11 applies to what Robertson did. Law 11 states that a player in an offside position at the moment the ball is played is only penalised on becoming involved in active play by: “Interfering with play by playing or touching a ball passed or touched by a teammate, or interfering with an opponent by: preventing an opponent from playing or being able to play the ball by clearly obstructing the opponent’s line of vision, or challenging an opponent for the ball or clearly attempting to play a ball which is close when this action impacts on an opponent or making an obvious action which clearly impacts on the ability of an opponent to play the ball.”
Arne Slot refused to blame the controversy for his team’s 3-0 defeat in the 1,000th game of Pep Guardiola’s managerial career, but insisted a clear and obvious error had been made by Kavanagh.
The Liverpool head coach said: “He [Robertson] didn’t interfere at all with what the goalkeeper could do. Immediately after the game someone showed me the goal that the same referee allowed for City against Wolves last season [when Bernardo Silva was in an offside position close to the goalkeeper as John Stones scored with a header].
“It took the linesman 13 seconds to raise his flag to say it was offside. So there was clearly communication, but as I said that could have influenced the game in a positive way for us. I would like to emphasise the fact that being 2-0 down at half-time was a fair reflection of how the game went.”
